Sentinel 3: Homeworld Review
PROS
- Finely balanced gameplay; hinges on clever use of active abilities.
- Upgradeable Commander unit.
- Unlocked features carry through to earlier levels.
- Intense, heart-pumping visuals and soundtrack.
CONS
- Touchy tower selection for upgrades.
- Initial viewing of maps can be confusing.
VERDICT
With constant rewards and a tidy campaign, Sentinel 3: Homeworld keeps tower defense fans busy without becoming monotonous even once you've finished the main story.
- Full Review
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Sentinel 3: Homeworld by Origin8 is a powerful new entry in to the 'Sentinel' series of tower defense titles and not only does it demonstrate a level of visual polish that's stunning, it shows a cunning amount of gameplay depth as players slowly work their way through a challenging campaign.
Homeworld fits in to the classic style of tower defense games, with towers being locked in to fixed positions around the winding paths that the enemy creeps follow. There's a strong focus on minimalism, with tower upgrades providing benefits that scale very well, allowing you to focus on other elements like managing active abilities for your Commander unit and orbital weaponry to compliment your defenses. As you progress through the campaign you'll need to unlock additional abilities, tower slots and orbital weapons purchased with cash earned after each level. Your Commander also acts as a reinforcing unit, able to jump between 'barriers' to provide assistance in the form of additional firepower and damaging attacks.
It's a delicate balance that occasionally results in requiring a replay to level up your Commander or to purchase a new slot, but once these upgrades are made available you can bump up the difficulty on earlier levels to make the process easier and more exciting. Homeworld's visuals are also simply amazing and while it can be hard to see the visual separation between available terrain and the creep path, the game doesn't suffer at all for this confusion and runs flawlessly even with its many special effects.
The fun doesn't end once you're done with the main campaign either as the leaderboards cleverly provide the tower layouts for high-scoring players, giving you a chance to easily match their score or even improve on it in the process. Sentinel 3: Homeworld is an amazingly adept and polished tower defense title; those already tired of the genre may still get a kick out of something this well designed and fans should definitely add this to their collection.
Screenshots
$0.99
